Ralph Waldo Emmerson Quotes

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church.
Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that, with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution, he will do no such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side, - the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Prayer that craves a particular commodity - anything less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is theft and meanness. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ever the words of the gods resound; But the porches of man's ear seldom in this low life's round are unsealed, that he may hear. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some of your griefs you have cured,
And the sharpest you still have survived,
But what torments of grief you've endured
From evils that never arrived. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

All ages of belief have been great; all of unbelief have been mean. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The world is the perennial miracle which the soul worketh. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is short, but there is always time enough for courtesy. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Genius since the world began; from the era of the Egyptians and ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The years teach much the days never know. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

A cultivated man, wise to know and bold to perform, is the end to which nature works. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The sower may mistake and sow his peas crookedly; the peas make no mistake, but come up and show his line. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life loiters at the book's first page,
Ah! could we turn the leaf. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Teaching is the perpetual end and office of all things. Teaching, instruction is the main design that shines through the sky and earth. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

One idea lights a thousand candles. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that I could see - not to eat, not for love, but only gliding. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Of lower states, of acts of routine and sense, we can tell somewhat; but the masterpieces of God, the total growths and universalmovements of the soul, he hideth; they are incalculable. I can know that truth is divine and helpful; but how it shall help me I can have no guess, for so to be is the sole inlet of so to know. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

We know the secret of the world is profound, but who or what shall be our interpreter, we know not. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wherever the truth is injured, defend it. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not out of those, on whom systems of education have exhausted their culture, comes the helpful giant to destroy the old or to build the new, but out of unhandselled savage nature, out of terrible Druids and Berserkirs, come at last Alfred and Shakespeare. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today. Let us treat men and women well; treat them as if they were real; perhaps they are. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

But in our experience, man is cheap and friendship wants its deep sense. We affect to dwell with our friends in their absence, but we do not; when deed, word, or letter comes not, they let us go. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Pride ruined the angels,
Their shame them restores;
And the joy that is sweetest
Lurks in stings of remorse. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long that they have come to esteem the religious, learned and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is about your outlook towards life. You can either regret or rejoice. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Beauty will not come at the call of the legislature ... It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature magically suits the man to his fortunes, by making these the fruit of his character. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The life of man is the true romance, which when it is valiantly conduced, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Herein is the explanation of the analogies, which exist in all the arts. They are the re-appearance of one mind, working in many materials to many temporary ends. Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakspeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it. Painting was called "silent poetry," and poetry "speaking painting." The laws of each art are convertible into the laws of every other. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

That which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say; even though we may repeat the words ever so often. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

That which we persist on doing becomes easier, not that the nature of the task has changed , but our ability to do has increased. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every individual strives to grow and exclude, to the extremities of the universe, and to impose the law of its being on every other creature. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Picture and sculpture are the celebrations and festivities of form. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

As we refine, our checks become finer. If we rise to spiritual culture, the antagonism takes a spiritual form. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The secret of success in education is respecting the students. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Cities force growth and make men talkative and entertaining, but they make them artificial. Ralph Waldo Emerson ~ H.W. Brands

We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Pines a thousand years old. Every year they must go farther for them: they recede, like beavers and Indians, before the white man. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

A system-grinder hates the truth. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson